25.04.2024
Das LOT
SONIC AGENCY – LISTENING SESSION VIII
Read the statement on Sonic Agency here
Thursday, 25. April 2024
18:00-23:00 SONIC AGENCY – LISTENING SESSION VIII
at Das LOT – Free Entry
🌿 Listening to the contributions of Aho Ssan (FR), Bader (SYR/LBY/BEL), Jana Saleh (LBN), Lucia Kagramanyan (AT/ARM), Reza Kellner (AT/IRN), Sote (IRN).
Live DJ-Set: Ghostpoet (UK)
Guests: Brandon LaBelle (UK), DeForrest Brown Jr., Lucia Kagramanyan (AT/ARM) & Reza Kellner (AT/IRN).
Open discussion moderated by Lain Iwakaru, Samo Zeichen & Shilla Strelka
* All contributions released via our Website & Soundcloud
AHO SSAN – “EBi (Patch Improvisation)”
Aho Ssan is the artist name of Paris based Niamké Désiré. After studying graphic design and cinema, he began to com-pose electronic music and create his own digital instruments. Shortly thereafter he went on to win the Foundation France television prize for his soundtrack to the film of Ingha Mago in 2015 and has worked on several projects related to IRCAM/GRM in France. His debut LP «Simulacrum» was released on the 7th of February 2020 via Subtext Recordings.Based on the concept of Jean Baudrillard, it navigates through society’s presentation of inclusivity and equality against my own experience of growing up black in France.
BADER – “Clash”
Having a Libyan mother and a Syrian father, Bader spent his youth between Benghazi & Damascus. He grew up listening to Libyan Tagaza Majrouda rhythms and Syrian classical music. His brother DJ Khalil was one of the pioneers in the MENA region who fused his musical heritage with hip hop beats. When Bader moved to Belgium he studied photography and became a videographer and visual artist, working for numerous artists & brands. He started curating Yalla World wide events in Ghent; bringing the cream of the crop of the alternative MENA music scene to Belgium. At the same time Bader started dj’ing and producing music with Yalla Soundsystem together with his colleague Acid Ponch. His sound can be described as a symbiose between east and west: bass heavy patterns merge with his own musical heritage from the MENA region. One thing’s for sure: Bader kills dancefloors without any compromise. Yalla Soundsystem has a residency and hosts a monthly radio show on the Paris based channel Radio Flouka.
JANA SALEH – “OK?OK!OK HUMERUS”
Jana Saleh is a versatile creative artist from Beirut, Lebanon, currently based in London. She is a performer, music producer, composer, sound artist, and DJ with a passion for exploring and promoting sounds and music from the SWANA region. Saleh has collaborated with artists from diverse disciplines on various stage and visual art projects, both locally and internationally. Despite the tragic loss of her music studio and home during the Beirut port blast in August 2020, Saleh has directed her focus and efforts towards raising awareness and supporting the artistic scene of her beloved city. Her work reflects her dedication to music and the arts and her commitment to showcasing the richness and diversity of SWANA cultures.
The project OK?OK!OK was born in 2020 following the Beirut blast explosion as a means to address urgency in difficult situations, channeling it into an art project focusing on translating inexplicable feelings through music and sound. A series of artist collaborations and documented live performances ensued. OK?OK!OK is never recorded, and always documented.
“Humerus” is a track featuring field recordings from the Beirut 2019 revolution and a broken Theremin. All instruments used in the project “OK?OK!OK” were salvaged from my studio after the Beirut blast of 2020.
LUCIA KAGRAMANYAN – “The Crucifixion Of Helios”
Lucia Kagramanyan is a Vienna-based Dj also known as a host of NTS radio show Panorama Yerevan, which is showcasing solely Armenian music in its huge variety. Lucia is researching Armenian music and makes it accessible via one-hour episodes that focus either on different genres or moods, mixing together old and new recordings. Her balance between obscure and obvious and digger highlights as a selector and DJ can be heard on radio waves of Palestinian Radio Alhara, and past guest shows on Red Light Radio, Reform Radio Bristol, Rinse Fm, Operator Radio in Rotterdam, and others.
REZA KELLNER – “As if it were”
Reza Kellner is an Iranian-Austrian multimedia artist who is particularly interested in using simple forms to explore long and minimalistic compositions, slow movements and immersive atmospheres. His compositions are subtle, permeated by gaps of silence, thus Reza is seducing us to listen closely, If you get involved, you’re rewarded by a deep listening experience that sharpens both, body & mind.
SOTE – “Student Work Mix”
Ata Ebtekar, better known as Sote, is an electronic music composer and sound artist based in Tehran, Iran. His wide-ranging love of rich sounds and textures is embodied in diverse paths such as hardcore club sounds, collaborations that straddle (traditional) acoustic and electronic instrumentation, and solo experimental electronics – making Ebtekar equally at home in concert halls, galleries, or clubs. Over the last three decades, he has released on labels such as Warp, Diagonal, SVBKVLT, Sub Rosa, Morphine, and Opal Tapes.
GHOSTPOET
Dr. Obaro Ejimiwe aka Ghostpoet is an Artist and a Mercury Prize nominated British singer, songwriter and musician. Currently based in Berlin, Dj’ing has become his way to archive, hip activate and eulogise music from the African continent and its Diaspora around the worldize nominated British singer, songwriter and musician. Currently based in Berlin, Dj’ing has become his way to archive, hip activate and eulogise music from the African continent and its Diaspora around the world.
BRANDON LABELLE
Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer and theorist focusing on questions of agency, community, pirate culture, and poetics, which results in a range of collaborative and extra-institutional initiatives, including directing The Listening Biennial and Academy. Previous initiatives include: Communities in Movement (2019-23), Oficina de Autonomia (2017), The Living School (with South London Gallery, 2014-16), The Imaginary Republic (2014-19), Dirty Ear Forum (2013-21), Surface Tension (2003-2008), and Beyond Music Sound Festival (1998-2002). In 1995 he founded Errant Bodies Press, an independent publishing project supporting work in sound art and studies, performance and poetics, artistic research and contemporary political thought. His publications include: Dreamtime X (2022), The Other Citizen (2020), Sonic Agency (2018), Lexicon of the Mouth (2014), Acoustic Territories (2010, 2019), and Background Noise (2006, 2015). His latest book in sound studies, Acoustic Justice (2021), argues for an acoustic model by which to engage questions of social equality.
DEFORREST BROWN JR.
DeForrest Brown, Jr. is an Alabama-raised, Ex-American rhythmanalyst, electronic musician, and curator. Brown’s debut book ‘Assembling a Black Counter Culture’ was released on Primary Information in 2022 and explores the links between the Black experience in industrialized labor systems and Black innovation in electronic music. As Speaker Music, he channels the African American modernist tradition of rhythm and soul music as an intellectual site and sound of techno-vernacular expression. He has released three albums on Planet Mu; ‘Of Desire, Longing’ (2019), ‘Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry’ (2020) and ‘Techxodus’ (2023). In 2023, he co-curated HOPE, an international group exhibition presented by Museion Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano-Bozen as the final installment of the TECHNO HUMANITIES trilogy.